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Support Control Patterns in a UI Automation Provider

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This topic shows how a Microsoft UI Automation provider implements control patterns for a control. Control patterns enable client applications to manipulate the control and get information about it.

A provider implements a control pattern by following these main steps:

  1. Implement the provider interface that supports the control pattern. For example, to support the Selection control pattern, a provider for a custom list control would implement the ISelectionProvider interface.
  2. Return an object that contains the control pattern provider interface when UI Automation calls the provider's IRawElementProviderSimple::GetPatternProvider method.

The following example shows the ISelectionProvider interface implementation for a custom, single-selection list control. The implementation includes property-retrieval methods for the IsSelectionRequired and CanSelectMultiple properties, and a method for retrieving the provider for the selected list item.

// Specifies whether the list control supports the selection of
// multiple items at the same time.
IFACEMETHODIMP ListProvider::get_CanSelectMultiple(BOOL *pRetVal)
{
    *pRetVal = FALSE;
    return S_OK;
} 

// Specifies whether the list must have an item selected at all times.
IFACEMETHODIMP ListProvider::get_IsSelectionRequired(BOOL *pRetVal)
{
   *pRetVal = TRUE;
   return S_OK;
}

// Retrieves the provider of the selected item in a custom list control. 
//
// m_pControl - pointer to an application-defined object for managing
//   the custom list control. 
//
// ListItemProvider - application-defined class that inherits the 
//   IRawElementProviderSimple interface.
//
// GetItemProviderByIndex - application-defined method that retrieves the 
//   IRawElementProviderSimple interface of the selected item.
IFACEMETHODIMP ListProvider::GetSelection(SAFEARRAY** pRetVal)
{
    // Create a safe array to store the IRawElementProviderSimple pointer.
    SAFEARRAY *psa = SafeArrayCreateVector(VT_UNKNOWN, 0, 1);

    // Retrieve the index of the selected list item. 
    int index = m_pControl->GetSelectedIndex(); 

    // Retrieve the IRawElementProviderSimple pointer of the selected list
    // item. ListItemProvider is an application-defined class that 
    // inherits the IRawElementProviderSimple interface. 
    ListItemProvider* pItem = GetItemProviderByIndex(index); 
    if (pItem != NULL)
    {
        LONG i = 0;
        SafeArrayPutElement(psa, &i, pItem);
    }
    *pRetVal = psa;
    return S_OK;
}

The following example shows an implementation of IRawElementProviderSimple::GetPatternProvider that returns an object that implements ISelectionProvider. Most list controls would support other patterns as well, but this example returns a null reference for all other control pattern identifiers.

// Retrieves an object that supports the control pattern provider interface 
// for the specified control pattern. 
IFACEMETHODIMP ListProvider::GetPatternProvider(PATTERNID patternId, IUnknown** pRetVal)
{
    *pRetVal = NULL;
    if (patternId == UIA_SelectionPatternId) 
    {
        // Return the object that implements ISelectionProvider. In this example, 
        // ISelectionProvider is implemented in the current object (this).
        *pRetVal = static_cast<IRawElementProviderSimple*>(this);
        AddRef();  
    }
    return S_OK;
}

Conceptual

UI Automation Control Patterns Overview

How-To Topics for UI Automation Providers